Invisible

Image source: http://bit.ly/cVKVKt

Sometimes, I feel invisible.

I stand on the tube or the train, and I stand and stare into space, and I hang on to the overhead bar like a Rhesus monkey.  and I'm just like everybody else.

There's always people I notice.  They might be well-dressed, or just have such a presence and sense of personal style that they don't just stand out, they seem to be the only real person there.  I might pass them in the street or see them on the train and they are going about their own business, oblivious to most of the world around them, but they seem to exist more fully than other people.

I'm not alone in how I look or how I feel, and it is the very fact that I feel invisible that shows how unique and unremarkable I am -- I am the same in this feeling as almost everybody else I will meet.

How we dress communicates messages to the people around us.  It tells them how we feel, it tells them what we think of ourselves -- it can even tell people what we think of them, and of their opinions.  You can dress like a hipster or you can dress like a Goth.  You could be immensely well dressed and as confident as Gala Darling.  You could dress like Lady Gaga (if some of you guys are very confident), or you could leave the house dressed in a Star Trek uniform.  Most of us strive for some semblance of an individual style, without wanting to stand out too much and draw too much attention to ourselves. 

Most days I look at myself, and then I look at the people around me, and I wonder how anyone would ever notice or remember me.  It's probably exactly that sort of mindset that ensures that nobody does.

This goes much beyond how I look, It applies to my life.  I think about what I do -- not just work, but all of my interests -- and I think about who I am.  And I feel like an unnoticed face in a crowd, a name on a list that is quickly passed over.  A dust mite of history.

I know, essentially, we all are -- a pauper or a king, we are all part of the same compost heap. 

But I want to live the kind of life that is worth being remembered.  I want to be noticed.  Maybe if I start acting like the kind of person who would be, the rest would follow -- that's what contemporary psychologists and behavioural therapists tell us.

The perspective from a cosmic coincidence

In a spirit -- an ongoing trend -- of sharing too much, I've not been taking my medication lately like I should.

For the first few days, I'd barely notice. So I'd forget further. Then I'd notice that things seem, frankly, a bit shit. It brought a sacrastic philosopher in me -- were things shit because I perceived them that way, or was I perceiving them that way because it was true, and I was no longer placated.

Strangely, I've found that doctors have little time for philosophical discussion, or contemplating how it's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

I discovered a detached almost amusement at myself. When I lost my appetite, and really couldn't cope, part of me wondered "just how far can I push this?".

In the end, I found inspiration in a late-night BBC TV programme about space -- with sign language. I was interested to see if there was a sign for "trans-kuiper belt object".

But I discovered that the earth is the only place in the solar system to see a total eclipse of the sun. The sun is exactly 400 times larger than the moon, but by an amazing cosmic coincidence the moon just happens to be exactly 400 times farther away from the sun.

How can you stay depressed knowing something amazing like that?

Finding my way

Maybe I read too many comics when I was little.

I have a desire to help people with my life.  In my romantic moments, I try to convince myself and others that this is what I really do in my sales role -- I help people to get the training they need.  Just like when I used to work ordering replacement parts for broken-down buses: I told myself I was helping save the planet with public transport, and my role was vital to getting these vehicles back on the road.  I never really manage to convince myself of these things.

So what, really, is helping people?  It's just too vague. 

Are we talking about charity? Medicine?  Law enforcement?  Deworming orphans in Rwanda?  Someone a few years ago suggested I join the Peace Corps, but it's not open to non-US citizens, and even then what would someone like me do afterwards?  I have even tried to join the military at one point, even if that was less for noble "I want to help people" reasons and more for selfish ones.  But even wanting to help people is selfish, as I once wrote in a blog post called Why I Hate Superman, because it's about satisfying me.

When I was hiking the Inca trail in Peru I had an idea. 

I would set up an adventure sport company that was dedicated to improving the lives of people in countries where it operated.  I was inspired in the town of Agua Calientes which seemed so dishevelled and broken down, and contrasting so starkly with a grand, expensive hotel for the rich tourists who wanted to visit Machu Picchu.  I thought to myself why couldn't some of that money go to the community?  Who knows, maybe it did -- maybe large sums was funding education and medical care. 

But what I conceived was that there are amazing, beautiful places around the world that are also suited to activities like mountain biking, all-terrain boarding, snowboarding, paragliding -- but also situated in deprived places.  So what if people came and they had their fun and then their money didn't go into making anyone richer, but instead was invested into schools and hospitals and water systems.  Apparently it's all been done before, though, and it's just not that easy to make profit with these adventure sports.


So, back to the drawing board with that one.

Enough flavour to last all 52 weeks

I don't really do New Year's resolutions, I've decided.

Over the years, I have made lists in January of things that I want to achieve over the coming year ahead, but whether I stick to them seems completely arbitrary -- I don't think the date has any measurable effect.  Either I resolve to do things over the year I planned to do anyway, or pick a bunch of things I think I should do or would like to do, and maybe I do them and maybe I don't.

There's things I want to do this year.  I want to move into London.  I want to learn to rock climb so that I can do it without supervision.  I want to finally learn to snowboard properly.  I want to get into shape (a shape that isn't round).  But none of those things depend on being new year resolutions -- I will achieve them because I want to, screw January 1st.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy New Year's eve -- I know a lot of people hate the pressure to have a good time, but I think these people can put the pressure on themselves.  I saw in 2010 at a small fancy dress party with friends and had a lot of fun, but in previous years I've had a good time doing nothing more exciting than go to the cinema, play pool, or stay in and watch TV.

2009 was a rough year in many ways.  I lost my job to redundancy, and the girl spent several months in exile in Western Australia waiting for the paperwork for a new work visa for her company -- money was tight and the distance put a strain on our relationship.  In the end, we made the tough decision to give up our house.

But 2009 was also a year of adventure for me.  In May, I travelled to South America with a group of about 30 other people to trek the Inca Trail in Peru, raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support.  Through rough  terrain at high altitude and on bruised and blistered feet, I made it to Machu Picchu.  The trek also wasn't helped by injuries I sustained falling down the stairs at home.  But Peru was an amazing, vibrant country -- and the girl's welcome at Heathrow airport when I got back stands out as a high point of any year, not just 2009.

Not content with travelling to the Southern Hemisphere just once in a year, in August I flew out to Perth to join the girl in Australia for a few weeks.  Together we visited friends and family (her family, not mine -- though we tried to see some of mine while we were there) and saw the sights of Perth along with the south coast of Western Australia, Melbourne and the Yarra Valley.  We took boat tours to spot whales, ate fish and chips in Fremantle, dodged rain showers, went off road driving and admired the unique Australian wildlife and scenery.

The redundancy, too, had a silver lining when I got a new job in London -- getting a new job at all in this financial climate was an achievement, so getting one that will enable the girl and I move to a new flat in London in the next few months is even better.

2009 also saw new friends made -- the girl and I travelled to Oxford one rainy Sunday to meet Tully, a lovely Aussie blogger who was visiting these fair isles on business.  We met Tully again a few months later for brunch in Melbourne, where the magnificent Miss Milo put us up (and put up with us) for several days and played the perfect hostess.  If you don't know these two, take the opportunity to check out their own personal journeys.  Australia also gave us the chance to connect with friends we hadn't seen since they were in London.  Sometimes the world can seem so small to make and keep friends from all over the world, and at the same time insurmountably large when these people are also so far away.

I want 2010 to be a continued year of adventure, and I want to work more on becoming the person I want to be -- and I know that is an internal journey I have to make, an adventure of the spirit perhaps, something I won't find on a rock pile in the clouds of a South American mountain or in a monthly payslip.

When your only tool is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails

...Or so I'm told. But what does that mean, exactly? Right now, it feels a lot like my job hunt.

I had the opportunity to meet a renowned Marketing writer/blogger last week, grabbing the chance to meet him while he was in London for a couple of days. Unfortunately, however much I think he and his blog are awesome, I can't link to it in this post as if he followed the traffic back here I don't think he'd dig my tales of girls and boys and marsupials, nor the old Serial Killer Sunday posts.

Anyway, I'd filled him in on where I am professionally -- some good experience but now "between jobs" and asked for his advice on how better to market myself, and get that awesome job with it. As part of my ongoing personal development, I have also set some objectives for myself -- working towards them involves in part asking people I admire how they got to be where they are.

It seems that there are two ways I can approach looking for work. The marketer summarised my position quite well, when you're out of work for a while you start casting your net wider and applying for jobs you could do, and maybe even do well, but aren't necessarily what you really want. There is nothing wrong with this, of course. The other approach is to hold out for what you really want, and accept no compromise. He suggested volunteering to work without pay for somewhere awesome, so long as I would be doing real work and not stuffing envelopes.

He has also stressed that I should be writing -- by way of submitting guest posts to relevant blogs, or writing a blog of my own. I tried setting up a new blog the other day just for writings on the PR/marketing industry, but I fell at the first hurdle -- I couldn't come up with a good name for it that wasn't already taken.

This week I have two interviews coming up: a second interview for a job as a sales and marketing exec, that seems to have little marketing to it that isn't actually sales, and a communications role that would be a significant promotion from where I was before. I was informally interviewed on the phone the other day for another sales position -- although it was described as management trainee or something, I think that was just clever marketing on the part of the job ad. It seemed to go well, I was told some of my answers were good, and that I'd here more if I was to be invited for the two-day selection process this week. I didn't hear anything more.

The trouble is, sometimes it seems like applying for jobs that aren't what I really want but I could probably do is treating all problems as nails. Do I actually want to work in sales? Would I be any good at it? And come to that, when did what I do for a living become so damned all-important anyway? It does not define me as a person, and should not be what my life is about. But it's easy to say that when you actually have a job -- getting one first is key, the rest comes afterwards.

A couple of my friends have turned to teaching. One of them has had several other careers to date, including being a police officer, a lorry driver, a petrol station attendant and a media sales executive. Will teaching finally be what they are looking for? The other friend has been treading water for the last few years, not really knowing what they wanted. I can more readily see them staying in teaching. They have suggested it to me as a career path, too, but I'd only take them seriously if they had already been doing it for several years -- but like social work which has also been suggested, I really don't see it being for me.

Finally, a friend posted this video on my Facebook the other day. It made me laugh, but I'm not sure what they were trying to tell me...

Macaroni art

I will return to my regularly-scheduled "Inca Trail" scribblings after this brief segue.

Things have been tough for the girl and I in recent months.

Losing my job to redundancy in July was unfortunate, but I immediately started claiming "job seeker's allowance" to try and keep the wolves from the door when it came to rent and bills. The fight to get housing benefit out of the local council has sometimes felt like an uphill struggle, however -- particularly when we were told the girl earned too much for us to claim benefits.

The girl had to return home to Western Australia several days earlier than she had planned, missing out on a trip to Paris with her Mum, when her grandfather died. Even at that time, we hoped that her work visa would come through in no time, and it would only be a short time before the girl would return to merry old England.

We hoped the setbacks would only be very temporary, but it's October and I haven't yet found gainful employment, and the girl's company still don't have their licence to sponsor her, so she is in unpaid limbo on the other side of the world.

Next month we don't know if we will be able to pay the rent. I have already borrowed sums of money from my parents to help make ends meet in previous months, but we are now getting the housing benefits we were previously denied so I hope to be able to hold the fort a little while longer.

On the positive side, the logic would follow that every day that passes without the girl hearing news on her company's licence we must also be one day closer to her joyful return. I also have some promising leads on jobs that I am interviewing for.

I don't spend a lot of time in the house I share with the girl now that she's not here. It makes sense to visit my parents more and take advantage of their hospitality to keep the running costs of our house down, but most of all it doesn't much feel like "our" house when I'm there alone.

I won't lie, emotionally I've had a bad time since I lost my job. Never having been the most stable of people in the past, losing the security and income of a job I (mostly) enjoyed set me adrift a little.

In a dramatic break with tradition, however, things have taken a turn for the better there -- and it might even seem in years to come that being made redundant was a good thing to happen. For a start, if you're out of work you can access government-funded training. And I'm not talking about basic maths or literacy, but more or less anything you want.

Granted, I am still trying to get someone to commit to the details, but in theory at least there are options open to me if I want to learn things like digital marketing, graphic design, web design because it will make me more employable -- those three could all help me make a move into roles like web content editor.

Not directly related to work, but sort of related to government funding, I have been in therapy, which was probably overdue. I think because of the recession, money has been freed up for what is being called "talk therapy", a combination of counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy. While it hasn't exactly set my world ablaze, it has helped me to recognise and address some errors in my thinking. Which neatly leads me onto the next point.

Personal Development. A local college is currently a 10 week personal development course for people a bit like me -- it's not solely for those out of work, but being held twice a week on weekdays probably means it's not very accessible for anyone in fulltime employment. The course is led by a certified Psychotherapist who also makes a decent living in areas like Hypnotherapy, as well as coaching and training.

It's all making for a good combination -- the course provides me with something to do other than look for work, I can tell employers about it when I go for interviews, and it is giving me useful tools for managing my own thoughts and behaviour. Mixing that with my cognitive behavioural therapy I have recently learned to treat myself better and be more objective, feel more positive, and have identified some goals and objectives. I won't go into details of the techniques I have learned today, but it's enough that it is doing me some good.

I visited the girl for a few weeks in August and September, which should have been longer if only we'd known there was not going to be work waiting for me on my return, and no firm return date for the girl in sight. But that's how these things go. I will be blogging about those adventures -- under the title of "Tales of Girls, Boys and Marsupials" (something I have considered renaming my blog on occasion) -- when I have exhausted my "I trekked Peru, yo" posts.

We aren't too clear where we go from here right now, except that today is one day closer to the girl's return and another day closer to finding a new, incredibly awesome job for me. And people will probably be getting macaroni pictures as Christmas presents this year.